5 April 2013: The African Development Bank (AfDB) and the World Bank organized a workshop on the Middle East and North African (MENA) region’s 2009 Investment Plan for Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), which resulted in an updated and revised Plan that will be presented to the Climate Investment Funds’ (CIF) Trust Fund Committee in May.

The workshop, which was organized in Rabat, Morocco on 19 March, brought together representatives from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia to discuss revisions in the Investment Plan based on recent political and technological developments. Participants discussed, inter alia: CSP developments in Morocco; costs and benefits of CSP; the potential of CSP in comparison to Concentrated Photovoltaics (CPV); and scaling up CSP in relation to exports markets in Southern Europe. The workshop resulted in updating the Plan, which will be validated by the AfDB and World Bank, and presented to the CIF Trust Fund Committee on 2 May 2013.

The regional CSP Investment Plan was developed in 2009 with the aim of: supporting deployment of one gigawatt of CSP generation capacity, thereby tripling worldwide CSP capacity; supporting transmission infrastructure for domestic supply and exports; facilitating regional up-scaling through market integration; fostering public and private investments for over US$4.85 billion; and contributing to climate change mitigation, regional energy security and integration, and industrial growth. The CIF has committed US$750 million to the implementation of the Plan. [AfDB Press Release] [MENA Investment Plan for Concentrated Solar Power]